Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine

ByJoanne Lee
Trillium Awakening Expressions 
Trillium Expressions Newsletter ~ November 2025 ~ Issue 79
From the Editor:  
Welcome to the November edition of Expressions. November is, of course, a bit of a misnomer for this eleventh month, as its name comes from the Latin novem from when it was the ninth month of the Roman calendar. My goodness! Time has certainly had its share of manipulations by humankind as we can see entering the return to what’s called standard time this weekend. November is the realm of Scorpio astrologically. It’s the sign of sex, death, and money. Scorpios are likely to be deeply passionate, even highly sexual beings. That’s perfect for us this month as we feature a new series of paintings by Olympia Trillium teacher, Joanne Lee, focused on embodied female sexuality in the form of the clitoris.

You might be taken aback reading that last sentence, but let’s take a moment to look at all the ways sex organs have been integrated into spiritual traditions. In Hinduism, the lingam and the yoni are central images related to Shiva and Shakti, the two creative principles, the masculine and the feminine. The yoni, a representation of the vulva, conjures birth, the ultimate act of human creation and is believed to predate even the Vedic period. The lingam represents the masculine principle; together, they are ShivaShakti, inseparable forces that all of us embody in our own particular way. According to one site I visited: from the sandstone walls of Carnarvon Gorge in Australia, known as The Wall of One Thousand Vulvas, to cave paintings in France and Spain, to Sumer, over 7,000 years ago, where the central rite of Sumerian religion involved the high priestess, representing Inanna, and the king, enacting a sacred union focused on the ‘holy vulva of Inanna’ to stimulate fertility. The very word ‘venerate’ stems from the Latin venerari, linked to veneris, meaning love and sexual desire, from which the name Venus is derived. Even today, traditions like yoni puja in India consider the vulva a portal to the divine. In Christian art, especially during the medieval period, both Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary are frequently depicted within a radiant, almond-shaped oval known as a mandorla or vesica piscis. This shape, scholars argue, is distinctly inspired by the vulva, representing cosmic creation and the primordial womb. The Virgin of Guadalupe’s image, which gained prominence after the 16th century, is consistently framed by a mandorla of golden light, with her flowing robes resembling labial folds. Mary is thus depicted as the ‘tunnel’ through which God entered the world.
I interviewed Joanne about her new series, whimsical interpretations of the clitoris, a sex organ that has been woefully misunderstood for millennia. In the history of sexual anatomy, the clitoris has long been dismissed, demeaned, and misunderstood. (Fun fact: when a French physician dissected this organ for the first time in 1545, he named it membre honteux—’the shameful member’—and declared its sole purpose to be urination (Scientific American). Joanne opened up about her own sexual awakening as part of her sacred reconfiguration as an elder. I hope you find her story and paintings inspiring. 
~Subhaga

Featured Expression: Clitorides
by Joanne Lee

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What drew you to this exploration at this time?
Art has been an enduring part of my life, sometimes serving as recreation, sometimes as therapy and always an outlet for my creativity. Through art, I am able to process my life, my growth, my evolution, my relationship to my culture and the world. My initial Whole Being Realization (WBR) resulted in years of sacred reconfiguration, which found its way into my artistic expression.

I opened up to the possibility of relationship after my initial Whole Being Realization after many years of being single. It was a natural outgrowth of my sacred reconfiguration. It wasn’t so much intentional as just a knowing that that part of my life, which had been dormant, was also awakening––awakening in a different way, an embodied way. I had always enjoyed my physicality, dancing, doing massage, doing yoga, hiking, paddling, and sexual intimacy. But post-WBR, I realized that using my body was not the same as embodied consciousness. Bring embodied consciousness into the sexual realm was new territory to explore. 

It was during this phase of several years of exploring relationship again that I was first introduced to the image of the clitoris in its entirety, and began sketching it. The entire organ, the majority of which is hidden within the body, became visible to me. I was fascinated that such a fundamental part of female anatomy, sexuality and pleasure is 1) mostly hidden from view and 2) mostly unrecognizable to both women and men. Even the external part remains unknown to many men and women. Women have endured and struggled for millennia with not being visible and not being heard in patriarchal culture. How ironic that the greatest source of physical pleasure is also invisible to so many. Something in me wanted to make the invisible visible. To make the silent, heard. To talk about this fundamental part of our anatomy and source of sexual pleasure. My sketches felt like paying homage to this source of pleasure and mystery. I have heard it said that the only purpose of the clitoris is pleasure. That there are twice as many nerve endings in a clitoris as in a penis. I don’t know if either of those are true. I read recently that the vestigial appendix, considered to have no function, has recently been identified as critical to immune function and digestive health. Maybe the clitoris has unknown functions, too, which will be discovered only when medical research begins to recognize the female anatomy as not only different, but worthy of more research. Whether or not it has additional functions, its known function as the source of orgasm is enough to warrant more attention, understanding and respect.

In this past year, I have been exploring a relationship with a man that meets me on all levels: physical, emotional, energetic, psychological, and spiritual. As our long-distance relationship has blossomed and my pleasure quotient has skyrocketed, these images started calling to me and asking to be made visible. I started to paint them, and the proverbial dam burst. So far, 15 have come into being, and there are more in my creative waiting room.

How do the images speak to or for you as a woman at this stage of life?

To reignite my sexuality at my age (75) has come with lots of surprises, challenges and unexpected benefits. Seldom have I found myself ensconced in the mainstream culture, at the middle of the bell curve and right in fashion. I’ve usually been ahead, behind, or way out in left field. The messages I hear culturally are that old women are dried up, uninterested in sex and unappealing. Fortunately that is not a universal reality. It is, however, unfortunately embraced by many in western culture. Youth, beauty and desirability are inextricably twined together. To swim against that current can raise eyebrows and judgements. Crone and hag are terms of disrespect rather than signifying wisdom, honor and value. 

I notice that they also replicate in an abstract way the natural world—maybe sprouts or insects, the way Georgia O’Keefe’s flowers replicate female sexuality. Was that intentional?

My intention, as with most of my art, is to let come through what wants to come through. I have an abiding connection to the natural world, so natural elements have emerged. I wanted to create images of beauty, so that the viewer’s first impression might be curiosity, awe or even amusement.To question, what are these? While most of us can imagine our other organs––the heart, the kidney, the intestines, few have a visual image of the clitoris. That seemed like an enormous oversight to me. Why not honor an organ that roughly half of the human race has, yet so few are familiar with?

How does the creation these images support or speak to living your WBR?

Painting clitorides (the plural, apparently, don’t ask me to pronounce it) has challenged me on many fronts. First, to represent the realistic organ shape but not in a graphic way challenged me. To make images that are beautiful when they for so long been hidden and forbidden. Then to show the work to others, and engage in the inevitable conversations that arose, challenged me. I want to show these locally and online and am currently working through those challenges. My own deep internalized sexism is being uncovered layer by layer, giving me countless opportunities to greenlight my discomfort, to recognize the cultural imprints in my mind and body, to reveal my passion to make the invisible, visible. The whole of me wants to be seen, wants to be visible, wants to be heard, and wants to engage others in conversations. Some may be uncomfortable conversations, some may be exciting conversations, some may be transformative conversations. There’s lots of talk of reclaiming the feminine, honoring the goddess, balancing the masculine and feminine within us. For me this is a way to honor the feminine, to bring her out of the shadows and into the light, to empower her and rejoice in her.

My previous series is larger than life, realistic paintings of insects. There are about a dozen images completed at this time. Many seem fantastical, yet are portrayed realistically. In a similar way to this new series, small insects don’t get much attention. They can elicit disgust or fear from many folks. Yet they are incredibly beautiful, complex, colorful and unusual. Like Georgia O’Keefe’s flowers painted large, I want people to see what usually goes unnoticed. Evolving into my whole embodied self gives me impetus to honor the whole embodied selves of other beings on the planet. 

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